Pages

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

What's Going On

The bees are going crazy for the blooming brassicas on the farm. Yianni and his friend Timothy both have hives on the farm and the remnants of our gold ball turnips, pictured above, were buzzing loudly yesterday. We only clear beds when we have another crop going in, leaving the soil growing plants as for as much time as possible. Sometimes this increases our weed pressure. We're pretty good at dealing with most weeds in crops, so I'd rather leave crops in, and have them contributing to the soil, adding organic matter, and protecting the soil from the elements for as much time as possible.

It's still unseasonably cold, and the soil is warming very slowly. We've got tomatoes in the greenhouse which are ready to go out, and probably will as soon as we can get beds dug for them. Many of the crops we have out in the field are covered with floating row cover - the spun polyester you see in the foreground. This adds a bit of moderation to the climate under the fabric. Actually, most of the crops under row cover right now are using as much for warmth as they are for insect protection. Row cover is our main pest control on the farm and it helps keep flea beetle off of brassicas and rust fly off of carrots. Unfortunately it does nothing against slugs. We're hoping our new found love of mowing the paths short will help a little with slugs and other larger pests.

We have been managing to get some beds planting and we're headed into the heavy planting time of year for the next month or so. This is a leek bed, without the leeks, but with some lettuce planted on the shoulders. We ran out of time to get the leeks in, maybe on Thursday. Behind that bed is a bed of 5 Color Silverbeet (chard), and behind that some very strong looking garlic. The garlic is looking good despite there being a few more weeds than I'd like to see. We were good about keeping the weeds down until a few weeks ago, and really there aren't that many in there. Did I say we're good about dealing with weeds? Well, maybe sometimes.

Ants shouldn't be doing any damage to arugula. On the slug topic, I was just having this conversation with folks up at the Bullocks and the general theme was that a multi-pronged approach is best, with reduction of habitat and access to crops, increasing predators, and trapping/hand picking all being components. Typically we don't see them in larger, open fields where there's lots of bare soil they would have to cross). Apparently a thin layer of grass clippings is also undesirable crossing territory for slugs - they move on a thin layer of slime that gets clogged with debris on bare soil or grass clippings (dry. Grass (living), straw or woodchip paths all are perfect habitat so they are to be avoided. Laying wood boards along the paths is a good way to attract them. They'll congregate in hot hours on the bottoms of the boards which makes it easy to find them.